To the surprise of many, KDE turns up unexpectedly on the extended DVD edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Dan, Robert and Antonio were the first of several to point out that KDE was clearlybeingused by Weta Digital (likely on IBM Linux Intellistations) in an animation shot with Gollum and Sam. This isn't the first time KDE has been spotted either on the silver screen, television, or being used behind the scenes of Hollywood.

Hmmm, yes they use Maya. But what another graphic app do they use on Linux plattform?
Gimp, Photoshop (w/cxoffice), VMware?
I don't think they have only one app (Maya) for one PC with Linux. I think Maya is useless if I can't change some textures with ??gimp??photoshop?? on the same machine!?

From their perspective, having the exact same application running on either platform may be a greater advantage than having a native, free application that is somewhat different. Pretty much everyone in the industry knows Photoshop.

There are a number of custom tools that the development houses have ported over. A lot of these tools ran on IRIX or Solaris already, so the ports were pretty simple. Beyond that, there are a number of other standard pro tools the studios use, namely XSI (used by ILM), Shake, etc.

They could have used Amazon for Linux instead of Photoshop (likely, at least for textures and backgrounds). It's way beyond Photoshop (or the Gimp), but hold your breath, it's _very_ expensive.http://www.ifx.com

I disagree, they probably have only one app for one PC with Linux. These are very specialized guys, there's no way, the animator or the modeller is going to do the textures himself. Probably they use Photoshop on MacOS for it...

Hmmm... you have "obviously" not kept up with Weta's Linux commitment and usage. There is no way to tell from the pics which *nix is being used but any slightly informed individual would safely bet that they are using Linux. Weta's commitment to Linux and Linux development is almost famous in the motion picture industry.

If you are so used to your own favourite desktop environment this is quite likely to happen ;-) I already found myself seeing KDE on TV without really realizing it at once ("Hm, looks like my own desktop") - it was just after a while that I got aware of it ("Hey, they used KDE!")

Ha ha ha. I am not certain if it is Motif or a custom toolkit - probably custom, actually. Maya's interface is a *mess*. It has an extremely high learning curve, but much like blender (which has a FAR worse interface), once you get familiar with it you can work quite quickly.

I can't think of a Pro Graphics App that does not have a big learning Curve. I found Maya at least a lot easier to learn than 3D Studio Max.
I think that Mayas interface is one of the most Innovative I have seen in a long time, It is just that the program is so huge it can be hard to know where to begin.
Anyhoo I am uncertain of toolkit but those toolbars look awefully Motify don't they.

This is certainly an excellent example of Linux and KDE being used "in real life", but the one thing which struck me about the screen captures (and the one thing which made it possible to easily tell that KDE was being used at all) was that the users of those machines run KDE with the Kicker panel unhidden!

It's funny but the first thing I do on any machine I have access to is to set the panel to autohide when not in use, in order to maximise my vertical [1] screen real estate! I'd have thought that other power users, such as these, who spend most of the day in the one app, would do the same.

[1] I know you can align the panel to the side of the screen to maximise vertical space that way, but unfortunately, given the necessary width of many of the panel contents, it doesn't really work so well that way (although you do tend to have more horizontal space to play with/sacrifice, than you do vertically). Another muse here: I wonder if anybody has done any research as to whether it's easier to fling the mouse left/right to reach a panel, than up/down? It would seem to me that it's a slightly easier wrist movement to 'rotate' left/right than stretch/retract up/down..?